Vietnam War Wiki:Projects
The Vietnam War Wiki's projects are joint efforts of editors who work together to improve a set of articles that cover a certain area of interest. Projects are not intended to give a group of editors certain authority over a set of articles. Instead, they are a collaboration tool used to draw people together. Benefits Projects have several benefits: *Improved consistency and quality across articles of a certain subject. *Tackle tasks which are simply too extensive to be done by a single person. *New users have an easy to find a starting point for getting involved in an area they find interesting or have expertise. Projects also allow new users to work alongside more experienced ones and thereby gain editing experience and security. How projects work Each project has its own page in the "Vietnam War Wiki" namespace which summarizes what the project is about, who participates, how it operates and its progress. This page serves as the central hub for the project's activity and its talk page is used to discuss and coordinate the project. Each project has a project leader (initially the project starter but that can be changed upon agreement in the project group later) who coordinates things and serves as the central contact point for the project participants and others (not in the "bossing people around" sense, more in the "help people and answer questions" sense). Each project has its own banner which is placed at the top of articles which fall within the scope of the project to make people aware of it. New projects A project can be created by any editor. Please make sure you follow the guidelines below though. Before starting * Check whether there is already a project which is similar to or encompasses what you have in mind for your project. If there is one, you might rather want to join the existing project than create a new one. * Make sure the new project has a broad enough purpose and scope to sustain the project to warrant a project in the first place. For example, something as simple as improving a single page should not be a project. *Projects should have a clear name, with a defined purpose and an unambiguous scope. Editors and new participants should have little doubt about the project's goals. Starting a project * To start your new project, create the project page. Make sure to fill in the relevant information - you are not going to attract contributors if nobody knows what this project is supposed to achieve. * Set up the guidelines for the project. Remember, this is a joint effort of multiple people - a consensus needs to be reached about how to do things. If everybody just does his or her own thing, it's missing the point of having a project in the first place. You should start by offering a few suggestions and then discuss them with the group until they are sufficiently fleshed out. What "sufficient" means is up to the project group. * Identify the precise scope of the project, i.e. which pages are affected. You may do this right from the start or discuss it with the other project participants first. ** Create a projectbox. These boxes are placed at the top of the affected article's talk pages to make people aware of the project. If you need assistance with creating the box, please ask one of Vietnam War Wiki's administrators. ** Tag affected articles with the projectbox. For projects which affect a lot of pages, you may want to ask for bot assistance. Simply ask one of the users who have a bot, usually you will find someone who is willing to help out. * Start editing. Project pages The content of a project page is decided by the project members, but there are some section every project should have: * The template is required on the top of the page. This categorizes the project, allowing others to find it. * A section called "Scope" defining the project's purpose and which articles fall under its scope. * A section called "Participants" which describes how to join the project and contains a list of members. You can use to easily create a list of members. * Sections for the project's progress such as active project tasks, a list of what's going on and where editors are focusing efforts. Create project page The box below allows you to create a new project page with the appropriate layout. Simply enter the new project's name and click the "Create" button to the right of that box. The name should be descriptive and end with "project" (an example would be "Vietnam War weapons overhaul project"). List of projects These lists are generated automatically based on the pages in the respective categories. Active projects Finished projects Category:Projects